About AntFarm

AntFarm is a culturally safe and healthy community space to be utilized for networking, support, and learning. It is a hub for Woape activities and a community center for the local area with activities occurring on site, in the community, and in the nearby mountain areas.

Activities are provided through various venues addressing a wide range of needs including individual and group support, tutoring, mental health and addictions counseling, art and music development, support for domestic violence safety, educational tutoring, work skills development, life skills training, problem solving support, and decision making. Services and activities are provided in collaboration with faith based programs, social service agencies, law enforcement and justice programs, schools, and local businesses.

Facts About Ants

* There are 35,000 types of ants in the world.
* The study of ants is called Myrmecology.
* Ants have six legs, each with three joints. Ants also have the largest brain of any insect.
* Ants are very fast and strong for their size. Ants can lift twenty times their own body weight and if they were human, they would be able to run as fast as a racehorse.
* Most ants only live for 45 to 60 days, but queens live much longer, sometimes up to twenty years. Wood ant workers can live up to ten years.
* Ants smell and feel with their antennae. An ant's sense of smell rivals that of a dog.
* Ants don't chew food the way other insects do. They suck the juice from food and leave what is left over.
* Ants have two stomachs; one is for themselves and the other is to store food for other ants.
* There may be more than one queen per colony. If there is just one queen ant and she dies, the whole colony dies because there are no new ants born. The queen lays the eggs, while the worker ants, who are sterile, watch them. The worker ants also collect the food.
* Worker ants move eggs day and night, closer and further from the entrance to their nest, to keep them warm. * Each ant colony has a distinctive smell which helps alert them to intruders.
* There is a type of ant known as the slave-maker. This ants steals the pupae of other ant colonies and uses them as their slaves.
* Army ants don't settle down; they are constantly moving.
* There are one million times as many ants as humans in the world.

What is Woape

Pronounced woh-ah-pay. Woape is a nonprofit organization which supports AntFarm. The vision of Woape is to support young people, families, adults and communities develop health and happiness through the discovery of hope.

The mission of Woape is to provide community and occupation based teaching using indoor and outdoor classrooms of experiences supporting spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical development and well-being.

Woape was founded in 1997 as a youth and family service organization established to teach healthy ecology, environmental awareness, individual psychosocial development, conscious decision making, and community service. With ongoing requests from the local community and youth organizations, the Board of Directors moved into Sandy, Oregon to create AntFarm. Woape means “hope” in the Lakota language.

Philosophy

Humans are experiencing a disconnection with each other and the natural world. Children increasingly choose inside play with electronic games, TV, and the intranet to outdoors. Research is finding a narrowing of the senses, a rise in physical ailments, and increased behavioral health concerns.

Understanding of the disconnection to the natural world has become an alarming concern. Therefore, Occupational Science has emerged as a leading field in researching the critical importance of humans to be fully occupational beings and that deprivation of occupations (life activities) leads to illness, unhappiness, and decreased functioning. The World Federation of Occupational Science has identified Occupational Justice is a leading issue worldwide for continued poverty, lack of well being and human suffering.

Woape believes in hope and the ability to discover meaningful, purposeful, and enjoyable occupations. We have worked for years with youth in the capacity of building stronger individuals whom are civic minded and relationship based. We believe to strengthen the character and integrity of the next generation will support healthier and happier communities. Woape has chosen AntFarm to be a unique blend of outdoor classrooms, indoor classrooms, social services, and business.

Market café

AntFarm prepares space for AntFarm Market Café, LLC ( limited liability company) which is owned by Woape and supports the nonprofit mission. Through this unique market design, the business generated through sales of healthy foods and drinks at the will support long term sustainability for AntFarm’s mission in Sandy and NE Clackamas County.

AntFarm Market Café, LLC will serve a basic health oriented breakfast, lunch, and dinner with an emphasis on organic, tasty food. Creating and teaching about healthy dietary options is important to AntFarm so food and drink items will include basic health information for increased awareness.

AntFarm Market Café, LLC will also support the mission of Woape through the development of 24 youth internship positions annually to provide job skills training. Mentoring and teaching youth about the food service industry, healthy living, customer service, and skills for successful employment are key aspects of the youth work skills positions. Paid youth employee positions will continue to be developed as the business grows to support the expansion.

Cultural arts

The Cultural and Art Center offers the community a space for school and community art, poetry, music, and photography projects, workshops developing artistic talents and culturally specific education, and a space to display personal art projects.

The Cultural and Art Center is the largest space within the AntFarm building. Designed with comfortable seating and strategically placed lighting, the community will be able to enjoy professional display of local art. Offering community support in learning, experiencing, and showing art is one of the goals in this space.

Planning is underway to develop a schedule of shows for public viewing to support youth artists in their learning. AntFarm intends to support all aspects of artistry including drawing, painting, poetry, writing, music, photography, video, and other personal ways of expression. Common themes will be offered to the youth in their creation so that the projects will support the mission of creating healthy, happiness, and community connections.

Traditional Native American Storytelling and Flute Playing as well as other expressions of culture will be scheduled for the community to come and share. Celebrating the diversity of culture is also an important goals in this space.

Performances such as poetry reading, singing, and playing music will also be shared to encourage community coming together to celebrate the expressions of our community members.

Axis Learning

AntFarm’s Axis Learning Center is a study and computer lab which has state of the art technology where local middle and high school students and adult mentors & tutors accomplish educational and vocational goals. Through structured and unstructured teaching and support, students will increase academic and learning performance.

Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author, opened a tutoring center in San Francisco where he connected inner city kids with professionals in the publishing world. This center, known as 826 Valencia demonstrates success in meeting youth need.

The Axis Learning Center offers youth a focused and supportive learning environment for afterschool learning, homework, GED instruction, and credit recovery.

The Axis Learning Center also offers local citizens access to the internet and workshops. Learning from successful educational and vocational service centers, individualized and group instructions are being designed as an aspect of learning. In the area of job skills training, workshops are being prepared to teach the following: Career Mapping, Resume, Computer skills, and Social Media. In addition, creating educational lessons for educational goals such as credit recovery, afterschool homework, and GED training are being developed. Developing an environment that supports learning for all people is important to AntFarm in building and supporting a strong community.

AntFarm Events